Most investors filing a SEBI complaint against an advisory company go straight to SCORES because that is the name everyone knows.
That works for some of them and fails for the rest, and the dividing line is not the size of your loss or how badly the advice went.
It is whether the firm holds a live SEBI registration. One route runs through SCORES with a clock the firm has to answer to; the other runs nowhere near it.
Which one you are on takes about a minute to find out.
Which Route Applies to You: Registered or Unregistered?
Your route depends entirely on registration status, and the difference is not a technicality.
If the advisory company is SEBI-registered, you have a regulated counterparty.
A complaint lodged on SCORES is automatically forwarded to that entity, which must resolve it and upload an Action Taken Report within 21 calendar days.
If the reply does not satisfy you, a two-level review system lets you seek a first-level review within 15 days of receiving the ATR, and a second-level review within 15 days of the Designated Body’s response.
From there, SMART ODR and arbitration remain open to you. There is a clock, an obligation, and an escalation ladder.
If the advisory company is not registered, none of that machinery exists.
SEBI has no registration to suspend, no compliance officer to answer you, no ATR obligation to enforce.
Your complaint on SCORES will not be routed anywhere because there is nobody on the receiving end who owes you a reply.
That does not mean you have no remedy. It means your remedy sits with the police and with SEBI’s enforcement wing rather than with SEBI’s grievance wing.
So the first action is never filing. It is checking.
Search the firm’s name and claimed registration number on the SEBI intermediary register at sebi.gov.in, and confirm the number is live rather than expired or cancelled.
A cancelled registration puts you on the unregistered route even if the firm’s website still displays the number.
Do You Have Valid Grounds to File a SEBI Complaint?
Not every loss is a violation. Bad advice that was honestly given inside your stated risk profile is a market outcome, not a regulatory breach, and SCORES will treat it that way.
What crosses the line is defined by regulation, not by how much you lost.
SEBI rules prohibit any registered investment adviser or research analyst from assuring returns, from handling or trading in a client’s account, from charging outside the disclosed fee structure, and from advising without the required risk profiling and signed agreement.
Any one of those is grounds, regardless of whether the market went your way.
The distinction matters because it changes what you write. A complaint that leads with “I lost eleven lakh” reads as a market dispute.
The same complaint that leads with “they promised a fixed monthly return in writing” reads as a breach.
Same facts, different filing.
Evidence Requirements for Registered Vs. Unregistered Advisory Complaints
The same folder of screenshots serves two different purposes, and knowing which one you are building for changes what you collect.
For a registered firm, your evidence has to prove a breach of what the firm promised or what the regulation permits.
The signed agreement, the risk profiling form, the fee invoice, and the advice that contradicts your stated risk appetite are the core. You are showing a gap between the licensed conduct and the actual conduct.
For an unregistered firm, your evidence has to prove that advisory activity happened for consideration.
The tip messages, the fee demand, the payment confirmation, and any claim of SEBI registration on their site or profile are the core.
You are showing that a service was sold, not that it was sold badly. Whether the tips lost money is almost secondary.
That distinction explains why the same complaint text fails in one forum and works in another.
Investors who copy a SCORES-style grievance into a police complaint often lead with losses when they should be leading with the transaction.
How to File a Complaint Against a Registered SEBI Advisory Company?
SEBI expects you to first take up the grievance with the entity itself, through the designated official who handles compliance and investor grievances.
Write to the compliance officer, not the sales executive who sold you the plan. Keep the email. That written record is what makes the SCORES filing land.
When that produces nothing, SCORES becomes your channel. You select the category, the nature of the complaint, and the name of the regulated entity, and the system takes over from there.
The step-by-step walkthrough of the portal itself, from PAN registration to submission, is set out on our page: SEBI SCORES complaint portal.
Once submitted, the system generates a unique registration number that allows you to monitor your SEBI SCORES complaint status in real time.
Two limits catch people out.
The complaint must be lodged within one year from the date the cause of action arose, so a package bought in 2024 and disputed in 2026 will be rejected as time-barred regardless of merit.
And allegations without supporting documents are not entertained, which turns evidence from a nice-to-have into a filing requirement.
If you are unsure what counts, the full evidence checklist is broken down on our page: SEBI complaint evidence checklist.
The registered route has a ceiling worth knowing before you start. SCORES makes the firm answer you. It does not order a refund.
Money recovery from a registered advisory company usually runs through conciliation on the SMART ODR portal or exchange arbitration after the SCORES trail is exhausted, and that trail is what gives the later claim its documentary backbone.
How to Report an Unregistered Investment Advisory Company?
Here, the logic inverts. You are no longer asking a regulator to discipline its own licensee.
You are reporting someone who was never permitted to sell you advice in the first place. That changes who you write to, and it changes what you ask for.
Three actions run in parallel, and each one does something the other two cannot.
Skipping any of them costs you something different.
Here is what each involves and why it matters:
- File a cybercrime complaint
- Visit cybercrime.gov.in or your nearest police station and report the matter as financial fraud.
- Carry payment records, WhatsApp or Telegram chats, bank details, and screenshots of any SEBI-related claims.
- This is the only step that helps preserve your personal claim to the money.
- Write an email to SEBI with your evidence
- Since the operator is unregistered, SEBI cannot process a standard grievance against them, but it can still investigate and take regulatory action.
- Share the firm’s name, the people involved, the fees paid, and the services offered through SEBI’s investor assistance and Market Intelligence channels.
- Your complaint helps SEBI build the evidence needed for future enforcement action.
- Alert NSE or BSE
- Report the operator to the investor service cells of NSE or BSE.
- Although this step will not help recover your money, it enables the exchanges to identify and warn investors about unregistered entities.
- Spending a few minutes on this report may help prevent others from becoming victims.
None of this looks like much while you are doing it.
The value shows up later, when the file is complete enough for SEBI to act on, and Money World Research is the case that shows what that looks like.
The firm was found offering paid advisory services, collecting client fees, and soliciting investors through bulk SMS without holding the mandatory SEBI Investment Adviser registration.
SEBI issued an Interim Order on December 2, 2014, directing it to stop advisory operations, stop taking new clients, withdraw its promotional material, and leave investor funds untouched without permission.
What that meant for clients who had already paid is set out on our Money World Research page.
Orders like that one rest almost entirely on what investors handed over. An unregistered firm keeps no compliance records and will confirm nothing, so your bank entries and UPI references are often the only proof that the transaction happened.
If the money went to a personal account rather than a company one, say so, because that detail separates the person from the firm he is standing behind.
One situation sits between the two routes.
A firm may hold a genuine RA licence and still sell services that only an IA licence permits.
That is a registered firm doing unregistered work, and it goes back to SCORES rather than the police, because there is a registration on record that SEBI can act against.
Our analysis of how registered and unregistered advisory firms scam you maps where that overlap tends to appear.
Not sure which route your case belongs to?
Our team checks the registration, prepares the file, and takes it to the right forum the first time.
Conclusion
A SEBI complaint against an advisory company only works when it lands in the right system, and registration status is what decides that.
A registered firm answers to you through SCORES on a fixed clock, with SMART ODR and arbitration waiting behind it.
An unregistered one answers to the police and to SEBI’s enforcement side instead, and your payment trail carries the weight there.
Check the register before you write a word, because the same complaint sent to the wrong forum comes back with nothing. Then file within the year, with the documents attached.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. What matters is the status on the date the problem arose, not the status today. If the registration was live when you paid and the advice was given, the registered route applies. Attach a screenshot of the register entry from that period if you have one, because the current listing will not show it.
No. The two run in parallel and neither cancels the other. But SMART ODR only accepts disputes involving registered entities, so if the firm was never registered, that door stays shut whether or not you go to the police. The police complaint is your main claim in that situation, not a backup.
Not through SCORES. Anonymous complaints are rejected there, and the portal requires PAN based registration before you can lodge anything. A Market Intelligence report does not work the same way, so investors who fear retaliation from an unregistered operator often use that channel first and decide about a named complaint afterwards
Go straight to SCORES and state the refusal in the complaint text. Every registered intermediary must publish a designated grievance official, so withholding that detail is itself a failure worth recording. It also answers SEBI's question about whether you approached the entity first.
Nothing. SCORES is free, and so is a police complaint. What it costs is time and organisation, which is where most investors give up rather than at the filing itself.
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